Vatican-Based News Service Launches Arabic Edition

Zenit, a Rome-based Catholic news agency, is launching a free Arabic edition on the Internet.

ROME — As part of an increasing global
effort to communicate the message of the Catholic faith to the Arabic-speaking
world, the Rome-based Catholic news agency Zenit is
launching a free Arabic edition on the Internet.

Since the start of December, Zenit has been posting Arabic-language Vatican and
Church stories on the Internet at Vatican Radio’s Arabic site, oecumene.radiovaticana.org/ara/index.asp.

Readers can subscribe directly to Zenit’s Arabic news service for free by e-mailing
infoarabic@zenit.org. Zenit is not yet able to post
its news articles in Arabic on its own site, but hopes to be able to do that
within the next few months.

So far, the response has been very
positive.

“We received 250-300 subscriptions
a day during the first week,” said the edition’s editor, Tony Assaf. “The impact has been really great.”

In collaboration with Vatican
Radio, the service will provide Arabic speakers with comprehensive news
coverage of the Church by translating papal addresses, Vatican
news, documents, analyses, interviews and events. The service will complement Zenit’s existing English, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese
and Italian editions.

The idea for an Arabic edition
began two years ago after Zenit was swamped with
requests. Patriarch Michel Sabbah of Jerusalem,
Lebanese Maronite Patriarch Nasrallah
Sfeir, Capuchin Franciscan Father Pierbattista
Pizzaballa, the Church Custos
(custodian) of the Holy Land, and three Iraqi
bishops were among those requesting such a service.

Ministries of education and school
directors in the Middle East also campaigned
for the resource.

“Up until now there has not been
the possibility for many Arabic speakers to read documents — even the events —
of the Church, so there was this great need for direct information,” said Zenit’s director, Jesus Colina;
“It’s primarily aimed at Christians who speak Arabic and who, until now, have only
been able to access such information through Islamic sources. For them it’s
been really difficult sometimes to know what the Pope is saying.”

As an example, Colina
cited Pope Benedict XVI’s Sept. 12 Regensburg speech, which Colina
said has still not been completely translated into Arabic.

Reaching Out

Along with communicating with
Arabic-speaking Christians in the Middle East
and elsewhere, Zenit also hopes to reach out to
Muslims around the world.

“We’ve been getting lots of
enquiries from the United States,
Lebanon, Iraq, Tahiti, Burundi — it’s been really amazing,” said Assaf, a Maronite Catholic from Lebanon. “We
have had many Muslims thanking us for the service, which is really great as it
gives us further encouragement and will help us to grow.”

The edition was launched to
coincide with an event of great significance to Arabic speakers — the Pope’s
recent visit to Turkey.

Colina has three goals for the service:
to deliver a genuine source of highly professional information on the Church
and the Catholic faith, accessible to other media networks; to build bridges
and stable contacts with Arabic media and institutions including governments
(the Jordanian government has already expressed a strong interest); and to
reach the grassroots of society, especially young people, as the majority of
the population in the Middle East are under 30 years old and regularly access
the Internet.

In addition, Zenit
hopes to communicate the Church’s good will toward the Arabic world, correct
misconceptions of the Church in the Middle East,
improve Church communications between Christians there and promote interreligious dialogue.

“I see it first and foremost as a
service to dialogue between civilizations and religions,” said Colina. “For me, it’s interesting to look at Al-Jazeera (an Arabic television channel that recently
launched an English edition), which is proof that exchange of information is
the way to understand others. But we currently have no Catholic equivalent.”

Fund-raising will be crucial to
the success of Zenit’s Arabic service. Although it
will receive some support during its first year through the charity Aid to the
Church in Need, in order to cope with its demanding workload the service will
require additional staff and technical improvements that must be funded through
donations. Those wishing to donate to the Arabic service can contact Tony Assaf at infoarabic@zenit.org or tony@zenit.org.

Other Efforts

Zenit’s new venture is the latest in a
growing number of initiatives seeking to improve communications with the Arab
and Muslim world. Father Luciano Cicciarelli,
a diocesan priest from Rome
who works with the Consecratio Mundi
apostolate, is currently translating St. Louis Marie de Montfort’s
classic True Devotion to the Blessed
Virgin Mary into Arabic. He expects the work to be completed early next
year.

Meanwhile, a Paris-based group of
journalists and experts on the Middle East have created the website Middle East
Transparent (metransparent.com), a portal in Arabic, English and French that
aims to promote a more informed dialogue on all issues affecting the region.

Zenit plans to work directly with
another agency that reaches out to Arabic-speakers, the Pontifical Institute of
Arab and Islamic Studies.

“It will be a good source of
information,” said Colina, who noted that Benedict
recently manifested his support for the institute’s work by helping resolve
some financial difficulties it was experiencing.

Zenit is also collaborating with Oasis, a biannual magazine published by
the Patriarchate of Venice that promotes cultural dialogue between Christians
and Muslims.

The magazine, launched in 2001 by
Cardinal Angelo Scola of Venice, publishes academic analyses and
recently began posting online the Pope’s weekly catechesis in Arabic. Oasis is currently developing a
“cultural website” directed at non-Arabic Muslim regions, such as Indonesia and Pakistan.

“I am very positive about Zenit’s venture,” said the editor-in-chief of Oasis, Roberto Fontolan.
“In the past, we European Catholics have not done enough in this area, so all
that we can do to talk directly to Arab culture — its people and countries — is very important.”

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